1. Field
The present invention relates to the delivery of data content over a network. In particular, it relates to the delivery of data content to a requesting device only when the requesting device is located in an authorized geographic region.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the growth and prevalence of network-enabled devices, individuals are increasingly able to access a broad range of digital content such as media, software, information and other data. Access control to such content can require application of numerous criteria, including whether a user is approved or authorized to access specific content and whether content is available at a particular geographic location.
Restricting content to specific geographic regions is an increasing requirement as digital networks span regional and national boundaries. Regional statutory or regulatory differences and differences in regional licensing arrangements can require that content providers and content distributors impose such geographic restrictions on the availability of content. For example, a content provider streaming live sports coverage may only have a licence for a certain country and they will need to prevent content requesters in other locations from accessing the coverage.
A simplistic solution is to require each content requester desiring to access content to register with a central authority to confirm their eligibility. This proves impractical when the content is being provided to large numbers of requesters in real time, and does not address the problem of requesters' moving geographic location, such as mobile devices suitable for requesting such content.
An approach often employed by content providers involves discerning the geographic location of a content requester based on a network address, such as an IP address. One such approach, known as GeoIP, takes user-entered location data from websites that ask web visitors to provide their geographic location (GeoIP is a registered trademark of MaxMind, Inc.). Large numbers of such datasets are then processed by a series of algorithms that identify, extract, and extrapolate location points for IP addresses. While this approach can prove effective, it suffers from the drawback that the required datasets must be generated and maintained. Further, the approach does not detect the actual location of a content requester where the requester communicates via an intermediary, such as a device communicating through a proxy server operating in a different geographic region. Yet further, some IP networks are shared across geographies and so cannot be easily or accurately associated with a single geographic location.
Related U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,895,236 and 7,218,914 disclose methods for verifying the purported location of a wide area network user. The methods of these patents involve geographically restricted broadcasting of an access code such that only geographically authorized users within the restricted broadcast region can receive such codes and so can access location sensitive content. Since such a technique involves the public broadcast of access codes, there is no targeting to limit access to such access codes to users on a basis such as subscription or other authorization without further access control technology. Further, the approach does not address the malicious sharing of access codes outside the broadcast region through other technical means, such as receipt and retransmission.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,377,810 discloses the generation of location information at a mobile device using a global positioning receiver (GPS) at the same location. This approach depends on trust in the mobile device which cannot always be assured, especially where flexibility and compatibility between many such devices is desired. The approach is especially fallible in respect of spoof GPS location data generated by malicious devices or software.
Thus, there is a need to verify the location of an untrusted device from which requests for location sensitive content originate.